By forming and strengthening relationships between academia and industry, the programme aims to ensure that the higher education system in sub-Saharan Africa produces engineers with the skills and knowledge required to meet the needs of industry, tackle local challenges, address the engineering skills shortage in sub-Saharan Africa, and to showcase engineering’s role in driving economic development in the region.

To maximise the impact of this collaboration, the programme is implemented through a ‘hub and spoke’ model. The Hub universities are funded to undertake bilateral secondments with local industry partners, and in turn, share their experiences with a larger number of Spoke universities through a series of knowledge sharing workshops and reports.